Self-Organizing Man

Freely Choosing a Queer Lifestyle

May 17, 2005 – 8:55 am

I’ve been reading Unitarian Universalist blogs of late.  Shawn Anthony is a new blogging pal.  In a post yesterday, he delighted me with his "Open Memo to Corporate Moralists." 

For years I have been unhappy with the lgbt activist tool that argues for our emancipation because we are "born the way we are."  When we accept this tool as the only productive avenue for achieving our civil rights, we also accept the notion we are inherently wrong. After all, no one willing chooses to be gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans.

Why can’t our loving and gendering be a personal choice?  We do not know how to address accusations that we are making personal lifestyle choices.  And here is where Shawn’s post blows my mind.

"Personal ideology which was arrived at and substantiated by personal free choice should not can not be used to prevent another person from personally choosing their own ideology, unless of course those who do so rather enjoy blowing over their own philosophical and/or theological house of cards."

Fabulous, uh?  When someone claims we make a lifestyle choice by who we love or how we change our bodies, we can say, "Well, you’re making a lifestyle choice to foist your beliefs onto me."

Yes, I know, study after study shows people feel more kindly towards us if they think we can’t help it.

But we buy into our own oppression everytime we claim we can’t help ourselves and provide no alternative argument.  What’s worse is that we deny the revolutionary aspects of democracy.  Advancing our cause because people think we can’t help it is very different from advancing our cause because people understand that we choose to do what we do. 

Fundamental to evolutionary democracy is choice.

By emphasizing choice, we turn oppressive behavior back towards the practitioner.  We hold them accountable for their "ick" response.  In theory, democracy has no place for legislating feelings. I realize the entire history and practice of democracy in the u.s. to date has been about legislating feelings.

Legislating choice, on the other hand, implies allowing someone else to do something I don’t like because they freely choose it.  Just as they allow me to do something they don’t like because I freely choose it.

Even though I don’t like using biological reasons to obtain access in this country the I-can’t-help-it tool can be a good one.

If combined with the I-freely-choose-it tool, the I-can’t-help-it argument creates an airtight defense against people who would deny us our basic rights.

"Well, evidence suggests there may a biological component to my behavior.  But if there isn’t, so what?  You choose to be a right wing Christian.  I’m not forcing you to be a Unitarian Universalist.  Why are you forcing me to be heterosexual or some other gender?"

The more tools we have at our disposal the wider our influence and more long lasting our emancipation.  We can choose to accept what has already been practiced in our democracy or we can choose to push what is promised.

The choice is ours.